Tom Chino picked Japanese turnips at his family's farm in Rancho Santa Fe.

RANCHO SANTA FE – Spread across 47 acres in the San Dieguito River flood plain, the Chino family farm quietly defies any definition that isn't sketched in its rich soil.

Despite a national reputation for boutique vegetables hand-cultivated from costly seed, much of Chino's produce is clumped into a shabby, mustard-colored stand, with only a modest “Vegetable Shop” sign on Via de la Valle marking its existence.

The Chino family name appears nowhere in plain view. And while no signs at the stand give the produce varieties and prices, the shop is awash with information, from how to choose and prepare its produce to which East Coast restaurant won its first Michelin star and which sous-chef has suddenly changed jobs.

The family farm, founded by a Japanese immigrant couple who had spent four years confined to a World War II internment camp with seven of their children, has become legendary for its exquisite produce and reticent owners.

Chino's Vegetable Shop

6123 Calzada del Bosque

Rancho Santa Fe

Five decades after Hatsuyo Nolo and Junzo Chino came to the valley from the internment camp in Poston, Ariz., the dark soil is still fertilized by manure, workers who hail from a single village in Oaxaca cultivate the crops, and a second generation of Chinos manages the farm in one of the wealthiest communities in the country.

It's easy to picture hundreds of townhomes where hundreds of ears of corn now stand.

“We've never considered selling the land,” said Tom Chino, who with brothers Fred and Frank, and sister Kazumi or “Kay,” runs the farm that their parents came to in 1946.

Although it's run by four of the nine siblings in the family, there's no commitment to remain a farm after this generation.

They weren't raised to be farmers, Tom Chino said.

“My parents didn't force us or insist or even vocalize the idea of keeping the farm going for another generation,” he said. “They were immigrants, so they had no heritage here. We were expected to go to college.”

And they did, to prestigious colleges, including the University of Southern California, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UCLA, where they studied science, law, medicine and engineering.

Two are doctors; one is a court commissioner. Tom Chino, on paper the incorporated farm's president, graduated from UC Berkeley and worked as a cancer researcher, going back to the farm after his elderly parents became ill. Both have since passed away.

Now, with the second generation in their 50s, 60s and 70s, and the 13 grandchildren coming into adulthood, none of the third generation plans to farm.

“I have a child, and I have no intention of forcing her into this business,” said Tom Chino, 58. “I think my family feels the same for their children.”

But the Chinos do teach another generation. Since the 1950s, the farm has hosted 1,400 Japanese agriculture students, many from the Tokyo University of Agriculture, who come to study the family's growing techniques.

“There are others who do this kind of farming, but no one is as widely known,” said Eric Larson, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau. “For someone to grow 47 acres just to sell to the local market is very, very unusual.”

It's the little things that drive Tom Chino, starting with the seeds and vegetable varieties, carefully chosen for their characteristics and compatibility with the farm.

“We're always looking at new varieties, and it can be really hard to get good commercial seed,” he said. “Most of the best seed is in Europe, so we try to get it there. My parents always tried new varieties.”

Even in the early days of the farm, Junzo Chino was known for experimenting with vegetable varieties. He was among local farmers who persuaded the University of California to start an agricultural research station in the area and then tested some strawberry seeds from the program.

The tradition of experimentation continues today, with startling fruit and vegetable varieties pulled from the farm's rich soil: watermelons with yellow meat and corn so sweet it tastes like dessert; bright-yellow, smooth-skinned melons with white flesh; and shelled beans stained white and purple.

All the produce they sell has been hand-picked that day, Chino said as he sorted through the items on display at the stand, tossing out whatever didn't measure up.

The customers know it. After boxes for Chez Panisse, the groundbreaking restaurant in Berkeley, are packed and rushed to Lindbergh Field, the stand opens and customers line up.

Restaurateurs from L.A.'s hot spots, including Spago and Sona, regularly make the trip to Chino's.

Tom Chino watches a man in a T-shirt pick up bunches of parsley root, and he bolts over to ask what the man – a chef at A.R. Valentien in the Torrey Pines Lodge – plans to do with so much of the tangy root.

“I'm going to try a pierogi recipe based on my grandmother's, with rabbit," chef Tim Kolanko told him. The recipe and the meal capture Chino's interest, and he begins searching for the perfect vegetable accompaniment by shucking and sharing ears of baby corn with Kolanko and customers nearby.

Kolanko takes a bag of the corn as well, after the stand's crew settles on a price. Chino's vegetables can cost two or three times more than grocery-store vegetables, but learning the prices sometimes requires agreement and discussion among the four members of the vegetable shop's crew, who set different prices for commercial customers.

Kolanko said he comes several times a week to shop, and the unique vegetables he finds can change and inspire his menus.

“There isn't another place like this in all the places I've worked,” he said. “Their varieties are so delicious, so fresh that they star on the plate by themselves.”

Within minutes, someone else has stopped by to tell Chino that a mutual friend's restaurant has won its first Michelin star. The sous-chef from George's at the Cove has come and gone, after telling Chino what she learned about curing meat at a restaurant in Cleveland.

“It's vegetables with advice,” said Larson, who has known Tom Chino since high school. “They know and love what they grow.”

Although the farm is a North County icon heralded by national food writers, the Chinos have never considered expansion or franchising, and they say they haven't talked about the future of the farm once the second generation is gone.

When the question arises, the family and staff seem to be in on a joke.

“As people get educated,” Chino said, “they know better than to do this work.”